She laughs about the antics of her two children, about her prolific emailing, about the novelty
water pitcher that glugs amusingly with every pour.

We were sitting on her Worthington back porch on a pleasant afternoon, with Herren, 48, still
wearing a hospital bracelet from a morning bone scan. She has already lived far longer than her
doctors expected. She calls these her “bonus days.”

Herren was in the news last year when she became the victim of a particularly cruel theft.
Kimberly Richeson, a friend who had organized a fundraiser to help her pay for cancer treatment,
ended up pleading guilty to stealing $11,000 of it. Richeson served time in jail and paid $9,000 in
restitution.

The two, who met when their children were on the same swim team, haven’t spoken since, she
said.Herren is generous, though, when asked to reflect.

“It was devastating. I loved her; I still love her,” Herren said. “She was here every morning
for tea. She helped me; she talked to me; she consoled me.”

Much of the good and bad that have happened to Herren since her cancer diagnosis in 2010 is
chronicled in a self-published book,
Letters From Maria. It consists entirely of the email she sent to friends and family
during a three-year period that included her illness and the theft.

Herren had deleted many of the notes, finding them too painful to read.But when her friend
Caitlin McNeil revealed that she had saved them — 900 pages in all — the book was born.

It begins in 2009, with lots of messages about life with her husband, Phil, and their two
children in a house at the end of a wooded lane. In 2010, the references to back pain begin. She
writes of pain so intense that she is forced to walk with a cane.

Finally, tests determined that one of her vertebrae had been reduced to shards by cancer that
had started in her breast and spread to her bones.

Her email revealing the diagnosis said this: “It is stage 4, my friends. The cancer has
metastasized to my bones. It’s terminal. I am not afraid.”

She told me that her first thoughts upon getting the diagnosis were of her children.

“And then my second thought was ‘Lord, give me the strength to do this well.’ ”

The spring days seem more intensely beautiful and fleeting to her now, Herren said.She still
loves to cook but doesn’t do it as often as she once did. She is excited about the heirloom
tomatoes she started from seed. She delights in her daughter, 14; and son, 13.

She manages the pain at night with medication. By day, she takes nothing.

That’s partly because she wants to make sure the medication is at full effectiveness when the
day comes that she really needs it.

And it’s partly because she wants to be fully present — to love and to laugh.